The Lost Spells

by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Like The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, The Lost Spells is an elegant and inspiring book, a delightful comfort that asks to be read aloud and shared. This beautiful collection of poems and watercolor illustrations is an homage to nature and wildlife that will delight and soothe readers as they are transported into a wider world of magic and wonder.

The follow—up to the internationally bestselling sensation The Lost Words, The Lost Spells is a beautiful collection of poems and illustrations that evokes the magic of the everyday natural world.

Since its publication in 2017, The Lost Words has enchanted readers with its poetry and illustrations of the natural world. Now, The Lost Spells, a book kindred in spirit and tone, continues to re—wild the lives of children and adults.

The Lost Spells evokes the wonder of everyday nature, conjuring up red foxes, birch trees, jackdaws, and more in poems and illustrations that flow between the pages and into readers’ minds. Robert Macfarlane’s spell—poems and Jackie Morris’s watercolour illustrations are musical and magical: these are summoning spells, words of recollection, charms of protection. To read The Lost Spells is to see anew the natural world within our grasp and to be reminded of what happens when we allow it to slip away.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487007799
Publisher:	House of Anansi Press
Publication date:	10/27/2020
Series:	The Lost Works
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 5.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

ROBERT MACFARLANE's Sunday Times— and New York Times—bestselling books include Is a River Alive?, Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind, as well as a book—length prose—poem, Ness. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, won prizes around the world, and been widely adapted for film, music, theatre, radio and dance. He has also written operas, plays, albums, choral works, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe. He has collaborated closely with artists including Olafur Eliasson, and with the artist Jackie Morris he co—created the internationally bestselling books of nature—poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature, and in 2023 in Toronto he was the inaugural winner of the Weston International Award for a body of work in the field of non—fiction. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is presently working on a graphic—novel re—telling of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

JACKIE MORRIS has written or illustrated over seventy books, including the beloved children’s classics Tell Me a Dragon and East of the Sun, West of the Moon and a volume of modern folklore for readers of all ages, Wild Folk, co—created with Tamsin Abbott, as well as introducing and illustrating Barbara Newhall Follett’s gem of wild literature, The House Without Windows. She is the internationally bestselling and award—winning co—creator of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, two books which have captured the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers of all ages. In 2018 she won the Kate Greenaway Medal and the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year for The Lost Words. Her artwork is held by public art collections in the UK and USA and has been published in the New Statesman, Independent and Guardian among other venues. She tours and performs with the Spell Songs ensemble around the UK, and is a Fellow of Herefordshire Art College.

What People are Saying About This

Steve Silberman

The Lost Spells employs Robert Macfarlane’s rapturous language and Jackie Morris’s bewitching illustrations to return language and art to their ancient occupations: building bridges of understanding between human and non-human worlds. More than a mere book, it’s a brave act of shamanism that touches and transforms the reader’s heart, healing and encouraging at a time when the world feels most desperately in need of restoration.

From the Publisher

PRAISE FOR ROBERT MACFARLANE, JACKIE MORRIS, AND THE LOST WORDS:

Winner, CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal
Finalist, Wainwright Prize

“A gorgeous book!” — @MargaretAtwood

“Every page is enthralling.” — New York Times

“Art, verse, and nature are combined with entertaining elegance in The Lost Words. . . This large, quality hardcover allows words and watercolour to shine and results in a work that can be left open at any page to stunning effect.” — Shelf Awareness, STARRED REVIEW

“A gorgeous coffee-table book . . . with stunning artwork made with watercolour and gold leaf, and poems on words ranging from ‘acorn’ to ‘wren.’” — PEI Guardian

“Stylish and melancholy, The Lost Words is a book to savour.” — Wall Street Journal

“My top book of the year.” — Spectator

“Sumptuous . . . a book combining meticulous wordcraft with exquisite illustrations deftly restores language describing the natural world to the children’s lexicon . . . The Lost Words is a beautiful book and an important one.” — Observer

“One of the most striking and poignant picture books of the season . . . This giant tome contains not only beautiful illustrations but a haunting series of poems that read like a summoning back of the wild . . . A book in which every page seems like an act of love.” — Herald

“A breathtaking book.” — New Statesman

“A sumptuous, nostalgic ode to a disappearing landscape.” — Kirkus Reviews

“This union of natural history, poetry, art, and whimsy is, indeed, a truly enchanting all-ages book of life to contemplate, read aloud, and share.” — Booklist

“Utterly enchanting, it’s a celebration of nature — but also language itself. If I ran the world, it’d be in every school library and classroom possible.” — Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

“One of the most stunningly beautiful books I have had the pleasure of reading (and rereading) this year.” — Fab Book Reviews

“Gorgeous to look at and to read. Give it to a child to bring back the magic of language — and its scope.” — Jeanette Winterson

“The most beautiful and thought-provoking book I’ve read this year.” — Frank Cottrell-Boyce

“Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris have made a thing of astonishing beauty.” — Alex Preston

Editorial Reviews

"Elegant … There is enough magic here to summon wild things even for those who are snug indoors." — Wall Street Journal

"This unusually beautiful book brings to readers the magic and wonder of nature … Breathtakingly magical." — Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW

"Macfarlane’s lyrics … ring with consonance (“Thrift thrives where most life fails, falls,/ is cast adrift”) and wordplay (“Woodpecker, tree—wrecker”) … Morris’s fluid artwork renders the elegant tilt of a fox’s snout, birds’ calligraphic flight patterns, and the eyelike whorls of silver birch bark … One to treasure." — Publisher's Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

"Through deeply humane poems paired with warm illustrations, MacFarlane and Morris invited readers into the space where the enchanting natural world meets the expansive imagination . . . Crafted with the same tenderness as its sibling." — Shelf Awareness

"Macfarlane and Morris bring us the mystery and wisdom of wild things as complementary and consolatory to our tame incompleteness … These painted verses sing and shimmer with a magical exuberance that renders the wild world not parallel, not foreign, but proximate, beckoning, native to our own souls … A charm against the curse of civilization, of exploitation, of apathy." — Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

“An enchanting diversion into the wonder and magic of nature.” — Bulletin

From the Publisher

Macfarlane’s lyrics … ring with consonance (“Thrift thrives where most life fails, falls,/ is cast adrift”) and wordplay (“Woodpecker, tree-wrecker”) … Morris’s fluid artwork renders the elegant tilt of a fox’s snout, birds’ calligraphic flight patterns, and the eyelike whorls of silver birch bark … One to treasure.

STARRED REVIEW Publishers Weekly

Macfarlane and Morris bring us the mystery and wisdom of wild things as complementary and consolatory to our tame incompleteness … These painted verses sing and shimmer with a magical exuberance that renders the wild world not parallel, not foreign, but proximate, beckoning, native to our own souls … A charm against the curse of civilization, of exploitation, of apathy.

Brain Pickings Maria Popova

This unusually beautiful book brings to readers the magic and wonder of nature … Breathtakingly magical.

STARRED REVIEWS Kirkus Reviews

Through deeply humane poems paired with warm illustrations, MacFarlane and Morris invited readers into the space where the enchanting natural world meets the expansive imagination . . . Crafted with the same tenderness as its sibling.

Shelf Awareness

Elegant … There is enough magic here to summon wild things even for those who are snug indoors.

Wall Street Journal